The metaphor-to-meaning structure is a two-part structure that moves from supplying a metaphor for something (a thing, or a situation) to revealing the meaning of, the significance behind, that metaphor.

The use of such late revelation is strategic. Like jokes and riddles, which of course do not give up their punch lines or solutions right away, some poems strategically employ the energy and the interest that can be garnered by creating and keeping alive suspense, by revealing what it in fact is “about” only at poem’s end.

The delayed revelation can also signify psychological pressure to try to repress the truth which is only revealed toward poem’s end, as occurs in “Fragments.”

All three of the above poems are from the first section of Claudia Emerson’s Late Wife, “Divorce Epistles.” The first two poems create metaphors for the dissolving marriage. “A Bird in the House” creates a metaphor for the way the speaker imagines her absence might be felt in her ex-husband’s life…

A big part of the constructed loveliness of “The Silken Tent” is that there’s almost no overt turning in it–but there is some subtle turning. The “meaning” of “The Silken Tent”‘s gorgeously constructed and maintained metaphor is offered in line 7: the tent “signifies the sureness of the soul.” And, of course, at the end of the sonnet, in the final couplet, where one expects the big movement of the turn, there is at least the hint of some movement. “The Silken Tent” contains structure, but it also is a model of the use of understatement.

There seem to be two kinds of meanings provided in “The Envoy”: both the revelation of the meaning of the metaphor and a larger statement of the meaning of the poem: metaphor, meaning, and all. (That is, this poem may employ a hybrid structure that combines the metaphor-to-meaning structure with a similar structure: the story-with-a-moral structure.)

“The Box Turtle” features its own spin on the metaphor-to-meaning structure: at the end of its description of the box turtle, it claims, “And there is no metaphor in this. No poetry.” Perhaps these concluding statements are true, but they are also a bit ironic, delivered at the end…of a poem.

Some poems reverse the metaphor-to-meaning structure, supplying the meaning first and then developing the metaphor. Here are a few examples:

And if you take out the final six lines of Yvor Winters’s “Before Disaster” (as John Ciardi recommends in the final chapter of his book How Does a Poem Mean?), his poem becomes another which employs the metaphor-to-meaning structure.

“Handle,” by J. Allyn Rosser A poem which clearly starts as a metaphor-to-meaning poem (beginning, “Like the handle…”), but, at the turn, instead of confidently stating its meaning, the poem instead enacts its own inability to “handle” its materials, delivering an avalanche of thoughts.

“Sheep’s Cheese,” by Jane Hirshfield In its penultimate line, this poem denies that it is trying to make a metaphor out of the poem’s materials (“The wheels are only sheep’s milk, not ripening souls”). But the suggestion is enough–yes?–to animate (to give anima–spirit, or soul–to) the inanimate.

“One of the Butterflies,” by W. S. Merwin Merwin’s poem, in fact, is structured more as a “list-with-a-twist,” but its conceit is that of the metaphor-to-meaning: the way that pleasure and the human interact is like the way that butterflies and humans interact…

“Bouquet of Roses in Sunlight,” by Wallace Stevens Stevens uses the expectation that his observation/description of the bouquet will turn into a metaphor as a way to highlight the singularity of the roses, and the moment they are a part of. (Note: though this poem seems to strive to place the roses “beyond the rhetorician’s touch,” the poem is a rhetorical tour de force.)

[…] led on the turn (and offers some great examples of student work), and I discuss a lesson using the metaphor-to-meaning structure (and offer some excellent student writing that came from it) here. Additionally, there’s […]

First off, great site. I just came across your blog recently. Quite insightful categorization. Secondly, I recently wrote a 5-7-5 haiku on my blog (seafloors.blogspot.com) that goes like this:

On the dash of a
rear loader garbage truck a
used baby mitten.

How would you categorize this? Lastly, given that a haiku is typically all about a suggestive image, and given its short length, it got me thinking whether various poetic turns might be more likely to be associated with a particular type of poem. At least in terms of the dominant turn, such as one might seen in a lengthy epic like Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh or Homer’s Iliad, or a haiku such as In a Station of the Metro

Hello, Arash– Thank you for this comment. I think it is the case that people tend to link particular kinds of poems with particular structures. For example, I believe that a lot of people believe that a haiku should in fact be a kind of emblem poem, delivering a bit of nature and a bit of wisdom. This belief, though, is limited: haiku need not work like an emblem poem, and engaged haiku writers know this. Consider Basho’s great anti-emblem: “How admirable! / To see lightning, and not think / life is fleeting.” Any structure can be used with any form.

Regarding your own, fine haiku, I’d refer you to Jane Reichhold’s excellent “Haiku Techniques,” and suggest that your haiku works by the way of contrast. (Note that many, though not all, of the techniques identified by Reichhold are poetic structures.)